Businesses across the globe are increasingly recognizing the benefits of storing all of their data, operations, and processes in a cloud. Using a cloud-based infrastructure in your organization can massively improve the overall performance of your processes and the digital user experience for your employees, partners, and customers as well as can bring financial benefits in terms of cost-efficiency and future scalability opportunities. However, moving all of your current processes into a cloud is no simple task. There are lots to consider and so most businesses tend to use cloud migration strategies to implement such a large project. Here’s everything you need to know.
What is a Cloud Migration Strategy?
A cloud migration strategy is essentially a comprehensive plan of how a business will go about migrating its current operations into a cloud provider of choice. Many businesses fail to recognize the importance of creating such a strategy and end up encountering unexpected delays, costs, and other issues. Cloud migration is a much longer and more complex process than it may sound – it has to be implemented in manageable chunks and in a secure and organized way. A cloud migration strategy will take into account a number of things, including your budget and cost estimates, your team’s workload, your business-specific goals, future growth ambitions, etc…
Creating an Effective Cloud Migration Strategy
The first and foremost thing to consider before creating a cloud migration strategy is what exactly are your expectations from it. What are the key reasons you are undergoing this change? What benefits do you think your business will be gaining from it? Having clear objectives for your migration is incredibly important, as those will be the things you will prioritize when choosing the right cloud provider and deciding what level of cloud integration is required for your business. It may also be a good idea to come up with some key KPIs, which will allow you to objectively measure the impact of the migration.
Once you have your objectives, cloud service model and the best cloud provider figured out, you need to create a budget with some cost estimates. Cloud migration will be an investment for your business and there are many direct and indirect costs to consider. Besides the actual costs of the cloud service, you will need a migration team of IT specialists that will consult you for the best options and help you move your operations into a cloud with as few interruptions as possible. However, experiencing a slow-down in your day-to-day operations and your team’s productivity is inevitable, so take into account these types of indirect costs too.
Lastly, when you’re happy to go ahead with your budget estimates, you need to create a clear plan for moving your on-premises data into the cloud. You are essentially creating a roadmap of what parts of your business will be moved when. This is where your objectives and priorities will come in handy, as you may choose to move the most important processes first and this way avoid long-lasting interruptions in your workload. You may also find it helpful to have deadlines for migrating certain parts of your business, this way making the process much more organized and structured. However, be realistic with your plan, consider testing times and the importance of data security in the process.
